fromsappho

[fromsappho]

In the life we lead together every paradise is lost.

Robert Hass, from Against Botticelli

#poetry #robert hass #paradise #paradise lost #american poetry #against botticelli #fromsappho

[fromsappho]

I have always lived with the most exquisite sense of shame.

Sarah Arvio, Night Thoughts

#sarah arvio #poetry #poets #quotes #shame #night thoughts #fromsappho

[fromsappho]

I must cultivate the cuts, discontinuities, ruptures, cracks, fissures, holes, hitches, snags, leaps, shifts of reference, and emptiness inside the semantic dimension. Inside the sentence. Explode its snakelike beauty and movement.

Rosemarie Waldrop, from Pre + Con or Positions and Junctions (via ahyperballad)

[fromsappho]

I am tired of my own mind. Its wanderlust and lust lust, its mis- trust of the blind suck of sea-– With you all is undertow. With me the tide is never enough-– I become beached, splayed, sandbound, dreaming water.

Kevin Young, On My Mind

#poem #poetry #kevin young #southern poetry #mind #beach #water #on my mind #black cat blues #wanderlust

[fromsappho]

The kiss you give another will echo in my ears through deep caverns that return me to your every word.

Gabriela Mistral, from God Wills It (trans: Doris Dana)

#gabriela mistral #god wills it #poetry #poem #poems #chilean poetry #love #kiss #words

[fromsappho]

                                              Eros shook mymind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees

Sappho, Fragment 47 (via lovedbyapollo)

[fromsappho]

He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

William Butler Yeats, from "Easter, 1916"

#poetry #british poetry #yeats #transformation #easter

[fromsappho]

I want the one rapture of an inspiration...

Gerard Manley Hopkins, from "To R.B"

#poetry #gerard manley hopkins #inspiration

[fromsappho]

It's lost, it's gone, it's scattered to all four winds. I myself am amazed at myself, how little of me remains: an individual being, for the moment of human kind, who yesterday merely lost an umbrella in a streetcar.

Wislawa Szymborska, from "A Speech in the Lost-and-Found Office"

#poetry #Wislawa Szymborska #polish poetry

[fromsappho]

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats, from "The Second Coming"

#poetry #british poetry #yeats #the second coming

[fromsappho]

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names, and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others fall: again and again the two of us walk out together under the ancient trees, lie down again and again among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke, "Again and Again, However We Know the Landscape of Love" (trans: Stephen Mitchell)

#poetry #rainer maria rilke #love poetry #love poems #love #death #german poetry

[fromsappho]

"Some words live in my throat breeding like adders. Other know sun seeking like gypsies over my tongue to explode through my lips like young sparrows bursting from shell. Some words bedevil me..."

Audre Lorde, from "Coal" 

#poetry #american poetry #audre lorde #coal #words #writing

[fromsappho]

Okay, Ophelia " We've heard you were a victim. Stop crouching in shadows, chewing your hair. You can be graceful, not like a ballerina, like a hedge of coral, Built up and eaten and worn down yet alive, carving the rhythms of the seas. You can be a threshing sledge, new and sharp with many teeth.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, "Okay, Ophelia" (from her collection "Becoming the Villainess" 

#poetry #american poetry #jeannine hall gailey #becoming the villainess #ophelia #hamlet

[fromsappho]

"...You've kissed my hair to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem, I say, a poem I wanted to show someone... and I laugh and fall dreaming again of the desire to show you to everyone I love."

Adrienne Rich, from Part II of "Twenty-One Love Poems"

#poetry #American poetry #lgbtq poetry #adrienne rich #love #love poetry

[fromsappho]

"Ah, but high, high in the air I flew. And far, far beyond the curb of her will, were the blue hills where the falcons nest. And then I saw west to the dying sun-- it seemed my human soul went down in flames."

Robert Duncan, "My Mother Would Be a Falconress" 

#poetry #lgbtq poetry #robert duncan #flying #soul #fire #falcons

[fromsappho]

On this winter night my eyes were closed with ice. I wore out the darkness until lazy dawn.

Izumi Shikibu, from "The Diary of Izumi Shikibu" (10th-11th century)

#izumi shikibu #japanese poetry #poetry #winter #darkness #dawn

[fromsappho]

Coming together it is easier to work after our bodies meet paper and pen neither care nor profit whether we write or not but as your body moves under my hands charged and waiting we cut the leash you create me against your thighs hilly with images moving through our word countries my body writes into your flesh the poem you make of me. Touching you I catch midnight as moon fires set in my throat I love you flesh into blossom I made you and take you made into me.

Audre Lorde, "Recreation" 

#audre lorde #recreation #american poetry #lgbtq poetry #love #love poetry